Hobby club celebrates 60 crafty years
<p>Lauretta Olsen and Agnes Gustafson work on a sachet project at the April meeting of the Hobby Handicrafters Club. In May, the club celebrates 60 years of meeting with other women of the Birch Grove and LaSalle areas of the valley. Gustafson was one of the club's charter members.</p>
<p>Marjorie Olsen, one of the founding members of the hobby club, enjoys a laugh at the April meeting, when the women made sachets from vintage handkerchiefs.</p>
Marjorie Olsen and Agnes “Aggie” Gustafson appear as charter members on the flower-bordered stationery announcing the first meeting of the Hobby Handicrafters Club in May 1952.
They move a little slower these days, but Marjorie, 87, and Aggie, 86, remain as crafty as ever after 60 years. At a recent meeting at Perkins Restaurant, they stitched up sachets from vintage handkerchiefs along with four other women, chatting and laughing about the good old days.
At one Christmas party at the Hacienda restaurant (now Scotty’s Bar in Kalispell), the gabbing got so loud that the employees at the Equity Supply Store party next door complained to the owner, who told them to pipe down.
“The next time, he came and kicked us out,” Marjorie recalled with a laugh.
It’s one of many treasured stories too good not to retell at their upcoming 60th anniversary open house.
The event is scheduled from 1 to 4 p.m. May 8 at the Birch Grove Community Center. The party takes place on the second Tuesday of the month, just as their meetings have for six decades.
Festivities include cake and punch and a chance to go down memory lane with photographs and examples of the many crafts they have made and treasured over the years. They invite all former members to join the fun.
“We’re going to snack and yak,” Lorraine Graham said.
The handicrafters’ group was similar to many such gatherings around the valley in those days, when women devoted much of their time to husbands, children and housework. A club gave them a social outlet, usually scheduled in one of their homes where they learned a new craft and supported good causes.
“We met in the evening so the husbands could take care of the babies,” Marjorie said.
Aggie added that it gave the husbands a chance to find out that taking care of children wasn’t as easy as they thought. Husbands were ushered quickly out of the hostess’s home before the hobby club members arrived.
Aggie recalled the time Betty Van Alstine shoved her husband out just as members were pulling up outside. She was so late that she piled the dinner dishes in a tub and hid them in the closet.
Club members knew nothing until they began cleaning up their dishes from their refreshments. Betty’s little daughter Debbie kept tugging at her mom until Betty finally asked what she wanted.
“She asked her if she should get the dishpan of dirty dishes out of the closet so the ladies could wash them,” Aggie said with a laugh. “I never let her live that down.”
Kathleen Graham, daughter of charter member Romona Graham, remembers how her mother cleaned and shined up the home for a week when it was her turn to host the club. Women took pride in their homes and considered the club meeting an occasion.
“She would dress up in nylons,” Kathleen recalled. “This was ladies’ night out.”
Aggie said no one showed up in blue jeans. Dresses were the attire in the early days.
Even this hobby club has changed with the times. Ladies wear pants if they like, and they now meet at noon and go to a restaurant instead of one another’s homes.
“When you get old, you have to come to a restaurant where there are no stairs,” Marjorie said.
Over the years, the club’s list of projects has grown. When it comes to crafts, Marjorie said the better question is, “What haven’t we made?”
The club has made angels, dolls, Christmas ornaments, Easter baskets, flower arrangements, valentines and more. Cheryl Timlick, Margorie’s daughter, said their projects followed holidays as well as trends in crafts such as ceramics.
“As a kid, I remember when they made pictures out of copper,” she said.
Kathleen recalled a hen and rooster picture created from various seeds, husband and wife silhouettes, and a Woody Woodpecker made of felt and cardboard. Marjorie said she still had the woodpecker and decided to bring it to the open house.
Not every project turned into a keeper.
“We had a lot of projects that were complete and dismal failures,” Lauretta Olsen, an accomplished crafter, admitted.
While some crafts bombed, the Hobby Handicrafters Club endured with the strong bonds of friendships forged during shared lives and laughter over hundreds of Tuesdays dating back to May 1952.
“These women were a community. They knew each other all their lives, and their parents were friends with each other,” Kathleen said. “That community no longer exists in our society.”
Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.